470. Gratitude and Hopefulness

(A New Year’92s Sermon.)

Gratitude and Hopefulness

(A New Year’92s Sermon.)

Act_28:15 : ’93He thanked God and took courage.’94

Paul had just landed at Puteoli and was getting off him the sea dizziness, and was about to cross the country to Rome. Hospitable Christian people at Rome heard he was coming and went out to greet him and escort him up to the city, and if any man ever deserved a triumphal entrance it was Paul. No sooner had he looked upon these people than two sentiments took possession of his soul: Gratitude and hopefulness. ’93He thanked God and took courage.’94 Standing here in the first morning of the new year, these two sentiments are dominant in my own soul, and in yours. Gratitude to God for the past’97hopefulness for the future.

It is only a few hours ago, at the midnight, that the door of eternity opened and let in amid the great throng of departed centuries the old dying year. Under the twelfth stroke of the brazen hammer of the city clock, the old patriarch fell dead, and the stars of the night were the funeral torches. Three hundred and sixty-five times hath the clock struck twelve for the noon, twelve for the night. During that time, how many marriage garlands have been woven, how many graves dug, how many fortunes won, how many victories achieved, how many defeats suffered, how many souls lost, how many immortals blessed! Year of assassination and of triumph, of conflagration and of harvest, of joy and of sorrow, twist a garland half of amaranth and half of cypress’97the amaranth for the joy and the cypress for the grief’97and I put the garland on the brow of the old dead year. And right beside the grave of the dead is the cradle of the new year.

This season of the year to me is very suggestive. It is more than an anniversary to me. The season is full of suggestiveness and full of solemnity, and full of gratitude, and full of hopefulness’97and kinds of emotion commingling in my soul. I thank God and I take courage.

In the Christian Church, it has been a year of great prosperity. We have blown the Gospel trumpet and the people have come in by hundreds and hundreds and yielded their hearts to God, and these altars again and again have been thronged with people who stood up in the presence of three worlds and acknowledged the Lord who bought them, and it has been a perpetual harvest home, and there now is a great multitude this morning in the house of God, children of light, who only a year ago were the children of darkness. I have thought it might be well to talk with you in rehearsal of some things we have been trying to do during the past year, and to state some things we hope to do during this coming year.

And in the first place, in this Church I have during the last year tried to be worthy of your confidence and love’97not by sycophancy or by consultation of your prejudices, but by preaching a straightforward Gospel, whoever it might hit. When a minister stands in the presence of a congregation who do not believe in him, his usefulness is done. When a congregation come to believe that a pastor has in his soul the principles of selfishness and worldliness dominant, he had better be away. When a congregation wish that their pastor might be called to some other field of usefulness he really is called to go. A minister has no more right to kill a Church than a Church has a right to kill a minister. There is a time to come and there is a time to go. I knew a minister of religion who had his fourth settlement. His first two Churches became extinct as a result of his ministry, the third Church was hopelessly crippled, and the fourth was saved simply by the fact that he departed this life. On the other hand, I have seen pastorates, which continued year after year, all the time strengthening, and I have heard of instances where the pastoral relation continued twenty years, thirty years, forty years, and all the time the confidence and the love were on the increase. So it was with the pastorate of old Dr. Spencer, so it was with the pastorate of old Dr. Gardiner Spring, so it was with the pastorate of a great many of those old ministers of Jesus Christ of whom the world was not worthy.

Many years ago, in England, a lad heard Mr. Flaville preach from the text: ’93If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema maranatha.’94 Years passed on. The lad became a man. He came to this country. He lived to be a hundred years old and yet had not found the Lord. Standing at that age in the field one day, he bethought himself of a sermon which he had heard eighty-five years before, and of the fact that when Mr. Flaville had finished the discourse and came to the close of the service, he said, ’93I shall not pronounce the benediction. I cannot pronounce it when there may be in this audience those who love not the Lord Jesus Christ and are anathema maranatha.’94 The memory of that old scene came over him, and then and there he gave his heart to God’97the old sermon eighty-five years before preached coming to resurrection in the man’92s salvation. Would God that those of us who now preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ might utter some word that will resound in helpfulness and in redemption long after we are dead.

Standing in your midst during the past year you have seen in me many imperfections, but you could not have had such consciousness of them as I have had consciousness of them, and I verily believe that the relation between us is strengthening, and that the friendship that began on earth will be resumed in heaven.

’91Tis not a cause of small import

The pastor’92s care demands;

But what might fill an angel’92s heart,

It filled a Saviour’92s hands.

They watch for souls for which the Lord

Did Heavenly bliss forego;

For souls which must forever live

In raptures or in woe.

Again: we have during the past year tried to culture in this congregation, and we shall try to do the same in the years to come, the spirit of Christian sociality. There are Churches which are Arctic seas, iceberg grinding against iceberg. People come into such a Church and sit down as they sit in a ferryboat, side by side, no nod of recognition, no grasp of the hand, no throb of brotherly or sisterly affection. From Saturday to Monday, they are simply ferried over by Christian ordinances. Now, my brother, if you have a hard nature, if you have a malicious nature, if you have a bad nature, the higher the wall you build around yourselves the better; but if there be in you anything loving, anything kind, anything genial, anything sympathetic, anything useful, let it shine out.

There is a vessel crashing into the rocks. One man crawls up on the beach from the shipwreck. He walks right up the beach, goes into the fisherman’92s hut and sits down to warm himself, utterly reckless of the fact that there are fifty men struggling in the surf. O! how selfish and how mean, you say that is. How much better the spirit of the survivors of the Atlantic steamer who, having escaped to land themselves, went out as far as they could toward the breakers, and the waters were cold, and they tried to bring the suffering and the drowning to the shore, and pulled away until the left arm gave out in the cold water, and then the right arm gave out, and then with their teeth they caught the garments of the suffering and the drowning and pulled them shoreward. Alas! my friends, if you and I having escaped from the dark wave of sin and death and got fairly ashore, we sit down to warm our Christian graces by the fires of the Christian Church, utterly reckless of the fact that there are thousands of Christians in the surf.

The Church ought to be a great home circle of fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters. That would be a very strange home circle where the brothers and sisters did not know each other, and where the parents were characterized by frigidity and heartlessness. The Church must be a great family group’97the pulpit the fireplace, the people all gathered around it. Who is that sitting before you? ’93I don’92t know,’94 you say. Who is that sitting behind you? You say, ’93I don’92t know.’92’93 Who is that sitting at the right and left of you? You say, ’93I don’92t know.’94 You ought to know.

I declare that you have the privilege of giving the right hand of fellowship to every fellow-worshiper. Many a time when the Gospel sermon may have failed, and the Christian song may have failed, and the Scripture lesson may have failed, one good, hearty shake of the hand on the way to the door and an expression of personal interest in the man’92s salvation have done that which all the other services of the day could not accomplish. If fish go in shoals, if sheep go in flocks, if flowers go in tribes, if stars swing in galaxies, then let all those who worship in the same Church move in loving and shining bands. ’93Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.’94 One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one glassy sea, one doxology, one heaven.

Blest be the tie that binds

Our hearts in Christian love;

The fellowship of kindred minds

Is like to that above.

From sorrow, toil, and pain

And sin we shall be free,

And perfect love and friendship reign

Through all eternity.

But I have also to remark that, during the past year I have tried, as I shall this coming year try, to preach to you a very practical religion. I know, as you know, the vast majority of the people who attend Church are business men and business women. There is no need of my dealing in abstractions. I know what your troubles are, what your annoyances are, what your perplexities are, what your exasperations are. I care very little about the Hittites, and the Hivites, and the Jebuzites. I would rather look after your annoyances and your perplexities and your enemies which are trying to keep you out of the Promised Land. So I only preach a Gospel that is not only appropriate to the home circle but is appropriate to Wall street, to Broadway, to Fulton street, to Montague street, to Atlantic street to every street’97not only a religion that is good for half-past ten o’92clock Sunday morning, but good for half-past ten o’92clock any morning; or good for half-past seven o’92clock Sabbath night, but good for half-past seven o’92clock of any night.

Now, suppose here were a case of diphtheria and a physician came in; would he give medicines appropriate to the yellow fever, or to cholera, or marasmus! O! no. He gives a specific for diphtheria. And there is a large company of promises here, a great collection of promises, and there is one just adapted to your case. It is a specific. It will cure! The fact is that a vast multitude of business men get no practical use from their religion. If you are sick, or if a member of your family dies, you say, ’93We must have religious consolation; send for the minister.’94 But suppose you are in a business corner, suppose the sheriff is after you, suppose your partner in business has played you a mean trick, suppose there are half a dozen men in the front office with duns for debts you cannot pay, suppose you can no more sleep at night than you could sleep on the top of a mast in a Mediterranean hurricane, suppose at midnight you walk the floor with flushed cheek and your head aching as though it would split open’97do you take practical advantage of your holy religion? O! no. You wait until the morning and then you send for some old skinflint and try to borrow a thousand dollars from him at two per cent. a month, and he will not lend it. Or you go to some friend that you helped in the day of trouble. You say he will surely help you. He will not.

I knew a man who in the panic of 1857 helped many through their troubles. He loaned a thousand dollars to this man, and five thousand to that man, and ten thousand to another man. He took other men into his own bank and said, ’93Give this man all the accommodation he wants,’94 and he saw many through their financial troubles. They said, ’93Thank you.’94 Five years passed along and his day of trial came. Where were his friends he had helped? All gone. Most of them out of town, or if they came in it was to say, ’93God bless you;’94 knowing right well that one ounce of financial help would have been worth fifty tons of God bless yous! Nothing makes a man so mad as to have you say God bless you when you ought to bless him.

Well, now, what have you done in the midst of your trial? Not at all what you ought to have done, my dear brother. You ought to have gone into the private office and locked the door, and then knelt down and said: ’93O! God, Thou hast said, ’91Call on me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee,’92 and this is a day of trouble; fulfill Thy promise. There is that note in the bank and I cannot pay it, and my rent is due, and I cannot meet it. Lord God, fulfill Thy promise.’94 Would He have done it? Just as certainly as there is a God on the throne. But many of you, instead of making your religion a robe in which to wrap yourself warm from the chill of this world, make it a sort of string of beads around the neck, that looks very beautiful, but nothing more.

In the panic of 1873, there was a business man found in his back office on Wall street, with a loaded pistol on the table, and he was writing a farewell letter to his family. A friend came in and mistrusted what was going on. He said, ’93This is my pistol.’94 What did that frenzied merchant want? Did he need advice of the brokers? Did he want help from the note shavers? Not so much as he wanted God.

I saw a man go right through all the perturbations of business life. He was faithful to God. I saw him one day worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. I saw him the next day and he was not worth a farthing. I said, ’93Mr. Stevens, they say you have been unfortunate.’94 ’93Yes,’94 said he, ’93it is all gone.’94 ’93O, no,’94 I said, ’93it is not all gone.’94 ’93Yes,’94 said he, ’93it is all gone. I put my name where I ought never to have signed. It is all gone.’94 I said, ’93William Stevens, I am your pastor, and I have a right to talk to you plainly. You say it is all gone. It is not all gone. Who put the iron fence around the village church?’94 Said he, ’93I did.’94 Said I, ’93Who gave three thousand dollars toward the building of this village church?’94 Said he, ’93I did.’94 Said I, ’93Do you suppose God has forgotten that? It is not all gone. You have made an investment for eternity.’94 All the rest of his life he was a clerk in the great manufacturing establishment over which he had presided. He was all that time happier than Henry VIII on the day when Anne Boleyn came to the palace, happier than Napoleon III at the time of his coronation, happier than any man who puts his trust in this world when he ought to put his trust in God.

O! how I should like to take the lamp of this Gospel and put it right down in your counting-room, right down on your carpenter’92s table, right down in your importing establishment, right down amid your commercial interests. I cannot help but see that the same trouble that makes one man ruins another. I stood at Long Branch and I looked off on the ocean, and there was a very strong wind blowing, and I saw one vessel going this way, and another vessel going that way. ’93Why,’94 I said, ’93that is very strange’97vessels going in opposite directions, propelled by the same wind;’94 but I looked again and I saw it was the way they had the sails up. And I see people under the strong tempest of disaster, one man driven on the rocks, the other man driven into the harbor of God’92s mercy. It is the way you have the sails up. One man has the sail of pride up, the other man has the sail of faith in God up.

But I see some among you business men trying to put your trust in God; yet, my brother, you make a dreadful mistake; you put your trust in God and then you take it away. A vessel comes across the sea. It is nearing the ’93Narrows.’94 A pilot comes on board. ’93Now,’94 he says, ’93captain, you have had a very rough time, go and rest; I will take you up to the wharf in safety.’94 The captain goes to rest, but he feels nervous. He says, ’93Now, how if that pilot does not understand his business; how if he should run us on the rocks?’94 He goes up and says to the pilot, ’93Here is a very peculiar current and there are headlands; now be very careful. I think I had better help you in this charge.’94 ’93No,’94 says the pilot, ’93I will take all the charge of this vessel, or I will take none.’94 We put our confidence in God. We say, ’93O! Lord, take possession of our heart, our life. We will trust Thee for the future.’94 We get nervous and say, ’93We are going on this rock and that rock, this misfortune and that misfortune.’94 God will take entire charge, or He will take none.

Only trust Him, only trust Him, just now.

Again: I have during the past year tried, as I shall try this year, to preach a Gospel of comfort. This is the most delicate work a pastor has. If you do not know how to dress a wound you had better not touch it. There is a good deal of spiritual quackery that comes to a wound that irritates it and poisons it, but does not cure it. It may take no special skill to take a sloop across the North river, but it does take a great deal of ingenuity and skill of navigation to take a steamer from New York to Liverpool. It may take no special skill to comfort a small trouble, but to comfort an immortal soul, all God’92s waves and billows going over it, and in the Euroclydon of bereavement, it does take a great deal of grace, a great deal of skill.

During this past year, how many of my flock have been touched, and during my pastorate of nearly thirteen years there is hardly a family in my congregation but has been sorely touched. Where are those grand old men, those glorious Christian women who used to worship with us? Why, they went away into the next world so gradually that they had concluded the second stanza or the third stanza in heaven before you knew they were gone. They had on the crown before you thought they had dropped the staff of the earthly pilgrimage.

And then the dear children. How many have gone out of this church. You could not keep them. You folded them in your arms and said, ’93O! God, I cannot, I cannot give them up. Take all else, take my property, take my reputation, but let me keep this treasure.’94

O! if we could all die together, if we could keep all the sheep and the lambs of the family fold together until some bright spring day, the birds a-chant and the waters a-glitter, and then we could all together hear the voice of the good Shepherd and hand in hand pass through the flood. No, no! If we only had notice that we are all to depart together, and we could say to our families, ’93The time has come. The Lord bids us away.’94 And then we could take our little children to their beds, and straighten out their limbs, and say, ’93Now, sleep the last sleep. Good night, until it is good morning.’94 And then we could go to our own couches and say, ’93Now, altogether we are ready to go. Our children are gone, now let us depart.’94 No, no! It is one by one. It may be in the midnight. It may be in the winter and in the snow coming down twenty inches deep over our grave. It may be in the strange hotel, and our arm too weak to pull the bell for help. It may be so suddenly we have not time even to say goodbye. Death is a bitter, crushing, tremendous curse.

I play you three tunes on the Gospel harp of comfort. ’93Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.’94 That is one. ’93All things work together for good to those who love God.’94 That is the second. ’93And the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall lead them to living fountains of water, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.’94 That is the third.

Once more, I remark that I have during the past year tried, as I shall this coming year try, to present Jesus Christ as the only hope in life and death. I have tried to show that if a man is not born again he cannot get to heaven. If the Bible is plain on anything, it is plain on that point. If there is anything about God, or Christ, or the judgment, or heaven, or hell that I have not presented, I wish you would tell me that I might preach that truth. Believe and live. Refuse and die. That is the Gospel.

I have tried as far as I could, by argument, by illustration, and by caricature, to fill you with disgust with much of this modern religion which people are trying now to substitute for the religion of Jesus Christ and the religion of the apostles. I have tried to persuade you that the worst of all cant is the cant of scepticism, and instead of your apologizing for Christianity, it was high time that those who do not believe in Christianity should apologize to you; and I have tried to show that the biggest villains in the universe are those who would try to rob us of this Bible, and that the grandest mission of the Church of Jesus Christ is that of bringing souls to the Lord’97a soul-saving Church.

There will be during this coming year, I suppose, multitudes of strangers in our churches. The vast multitude of them perhaps we will meet only once. Will you by your prayer, and shall I by my exhortation, meet the case of any of these? How many will you save? A thousand? five hundred? one hundred? twenty? ten? one? or none? All other work seems stale and insipid compared with the work of soul-saving. Now the year is gone. If you have neglected your duty, if I have neglected my duty, it is neglected forever. Each year has its work. If the work is performed within the twelve months, it is done forever. If neglected, it is neglected forever. We cannot call that year back again. When a woman was dying, she said, ’93Call them back.’94 They did not know what she meant. She had been a disciple of the world. She said, ’93Call them back!’94 They said, ’93Who do you want us to call back?’94 ’93Oh,’94 she said, ’93call them back, the days, the months, the years I have wasted. Call them back!’94 But you cannot call them back; you cannot call a year back, or a month back, or a week back, or an hour back, or a second back. Gone once, it is gone forever.

When a great battle was raging, a messenger came up and said to the general, who was talking with an officer, ’93General, we have taken a standard from the enemy.’94 The general kept right on conversing with his fellow-officer, and the messenger said again, ’93General, we have taken a standard from the enemy.’94 Still the general kept right on, and the messenger lost his patience, not having his message seemingly appreciated, and said again, ’93General, we have taken a standard from the enemy.’94 The general then looked at him and said, ’93Take another.’94 Ah! forgetting the things that are behind, let us look to those that are before. Win another castle, take another standard, gain another victory. Roll on, sweet day of the world’92s emancipation, when ’93the mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the wood shall clap their hands, and instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier will come up the myrtle-tree, and it shall be unto the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that cannot be cut off.’94

The song of love, now low, now far,

Ere long shall swell from star to star;

That light, the breaking day which tips

The golden-spired apocalyse.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage